Advise Needed---.348 Winchester

[Alstep]

Greetings folks,

I'd like to start casting & loading for my .348 Winchester. What molds & loads are you all using? Hardness of boolets and lead composition? Will be looking for a mold or two in the near future.
Your thoughts would be most appreciated.

[Mk42gunner]

Closest I have come to loading the .348 Win is to buy converted brass for my .43 Spanish, and some to try to convert myself.

Lyman used to make a couple of molds for the .348, but no more. If you really want one, I suggest haunting one of the auction sites and be prepared to bid high.

What I would do is contact Tom at Accurate molds and see what he has.

Plain old 12.5 BHN air cooled wheel weights have shot well in just about every sub 2000 fps rifle I have tried them in. For hunting you may want a softer alloy, you may not.

Good Luck,

Robert

[jwhite]

I cast and load for the .348, had a 220gr LFN mold cut by Veral Smith @ LBT and it is great. I have used mostly water dropped mix of WW & pure lead and sometimes straight WW. I have also played around with softnosed cast bullets using a pure lead nose and WW base along with split nose bullets made by putting tin foil into the mold to make a segmented nose. If you search the forum for posts i have made it should turn up some of the info i have posted previously.

[beagle]

Loading the .348 Win is a work of love. Everything for it is hard to get. Dies aren't too hard, brass is so-so but old when you find it, you'll need to order a custom bullet sizing die and as I recall, Hornady has stopped making .348 checks. You can still find them and it's a worthwhile project when you finally get it up and running. I was partial to the RCBS 348-200-FN but several of the older Lyman moulds are good if you can find them and of course, the custom makers are great as well.
Good luck with it. It's a good shooter./beagle

[Alstep]

Thanks to all for your responses. I had a Model 71 many years ago and stupidly let it go. Just found another one. I still have dies & brass, just never cast for it. So finding molds is my problem. Any leads would be appreciated.

[Bird]

Accurate molds is your best bet. RCBS was a good mold, but is discontinued and used are rare and same price as Accurate's offerings. Right now I would think about buying whatever jacketed bullets you can find, unless you already have lead.
I bought a couple of thousand hornady's 20 years ago, and to make economic sense I would have to shoot 1000 cast to make it worthwhile. Cost of lead, mold, sizing die(custom), gas checks can buy a lot of jacketed bullets.

[jwhite]

I have not tried it but have heard of others having luck squeezing .358 bullets to work in the 348, believe there is a youtube video discussing this. Pretty sure he was using the 220gr Speer 35 caliber bullets and re-sizing them. I lucked out and managed to buy 5 or 6 thousand gas checks when one of the online places was clearing em out, should last me for next several lifetimes. I also managed to acquire a good supply of the .348 Hornady 200gr jacket bullets that I will probably never even use, had such good luck with my LBT cast bullets that i cant see any need to even shoot the jacketed bullets. With jacketed bullets i had best luck with IMR 4064 and 4895 and with cast bullets i have had best luck with slower powder like Data 85 and reloader 19.

[Rick B]

348 Winchester Model 71's are a lot of fun with cast. Owned a 200 grain RCBS mold. It shot well. However a loaded round seated to be crimped in the crimp groove. Was somewhat ugly looking, with it's very short nose. Picked up a Lyman 350447 mold, 187 grain gas check. Shoots very well, and looks good. Sage Outdoors has gas checks. Tom at Accurate molds can make you a mold. I use 50% WW and 50% Range scrap for an alloy. About 13 BHN. Load runs 1850 fps. Very accurate, and the recoil is easy.
Rick

[rintinglen]

I have two molds for my 1951 Winchester 71. One is the aforementioned RCBS 348-200, the second is a brass Accurate 350-220B, both are exceptionally accurate. I can not endorse the Lyman 350-447. In my experience it is a poor third to either of the above molds, shooting groups an inch or more greater at 100 yards.

However, for strictly funsies, I shoot Lyman 358-429 170 grains SWC's sized .351 over 13 grains of Red Dot or 15 grains of Unique. I lube and size them to.356 in my Lyman 450, then run them through a custom Lee sizer to get the final size down to what I want.. These are very accurate and don't beat you up. They shoot low, so figure on raising your rear sight as high as it goes. But they will cluster close together and are great plinkers. No gas check required.

The first pic below has Hornady RN and Monoflex FTX bullets alongside a couple of Accurate 350-220B loads, while the second shows my plinkers.